[1] Spring.
[2] Whispering.
[3] Printed by him in 1894 in a 'Festschrift' in honour of Professor Hildebrand.
[4] To be carefully distinguished from the so-called Coventry Plays of Cotton MS., Vespasian, D. viii., whose highly doubtful connection with Coventry rests solely on a note of Cotton's librarian.
[5] It would be convenient if they could be called the Cotton Plays, as the Wakefield cycle has been called after the Towneley family.
[6] See p. 316. Stage-plays were acted in the summer, interludes in the winter, the cost of hiring dresses being apparently from three to five times as great for a stage-play as for an interlude. My own interpretation is that the distinction has nothing to do with the plays acted, but solely to the place of performance, interludes being acted indoors and stage-plays in the open air, where the dresses were exposed to greater damage.
[7] Prohemye to Polychronicon, ad fin.
[8] The argument as I understand it runs as follows:—
(i) The author of the Prologue is the author of the Translation of the Bible (which may be granted, though not without the reservation that the helpers to whom allusion is made may have written sections of the Prologue, which would confuse any deductions).
(ii) The Prologue has verbal resemblances to the treatise designated Ecclesiæ Regimen (the instances quoted seem to me resemblances merely of topics, and these not uncommon ones).